For A Few Moments H. And I Both Enjoyed The
Motion.
We stood amidships, she in her shawl, I in a great tarpauling
which I had borrowed of Jack, and every pitch sent the spray over us.
We exulted that we were not going to be sick.
Suddenly, however, so
suddenly that it was quite mysterious, conscience smote me. A
profound, a deep-seated remorse developed itself just exactly in the
deepest centre of the pit of my stomach.
"H.," said I, with a decided, grave air, "I'm going to be seasick."
"So am I," said she, as if struck by the same convictions that had
been impressed on me. We turned, and made our way along the leeward
quarter, to a seat by the bulwarks. I stood holding on by the
railrope, and every now and then addressing a few incoherent and
rather guttural, not to say pectoral, remarks to the green and gloomy
sea, as I leaned over the rail. After every paroxysm of
communicativeness, (for in seasickness the organ of secretiveness
gives way,) I regained my perpendicular, and faced the foe, with a
determination that I would stand it through - that the grinning,
howling brine should get no more secrets out of me. And, in fact, it
did not.
Meanwhile, what horrors - what complicated horrors - did not that
crowded deck present! Did the priestly miscreants of the middle ages
ever represent among the torments of purgatory the deck of a channel
steamer? If not, then they forgot the "lower deep," that Satan
doubtless thought about, according to Milton.
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